Book Review: Chess Endings for Beginners

Introduction

Add me to the list of club players who long harbor intentions, often lurking in the dark recesses of our brains, to someday dive deep into endgame study. No less of a talent than World Champion Jose Raul Capablanca advised:

In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before anything else...

Back in the mid-2010s I worked through Silman's Complete Endgame Course, the book I still consider the most important and useful endgame manual for club players. I finished all the material up to and including the first half of the "Class A" chapter. For those unfamiliar with the book, Silman innovatively organized it by rating levels. The idea is that you can then focus on studying just the material through the chapter right above your current rating level. So, as a 1750 player, I worked through everything until the 1800-2000 chapter. That chapter I attempted to study but found the advanced rook endings and minor piece endings too much for me at the time.

I reviewed Silman's chapters numerous times over the following years. I even put all the positions through the "Class B" chapter into my chess database and, every so often, solve them as puzzles.

I tried to do something similar with the very popular 100 Endgames You Must Know. But, ultimately, I don't think that book is as strong pedagogically, at least for average club players, as Silman. The book seems better suited to 1800+ players, and the organization of the book unfortunately follows the tradition of grouping endgames by the material on the board instead of by the order one should learn them (as Silman had so brilliantly done). Too many nuances are left out of explanations because the author assumes an existing endgame competency. This is not a fault of the book, but it points out that it is not the best for average club players.

Since studying Silman, I'm always on the lookout for the next great endgame resource. Particularly, I am always on the hunt for good problem sets that are not too advanced and not too focused on endgame studies, those creative – usually unrealistic – problems composed by humans to make us all want to crush our chess pieces under our heels.

Earlier this year, I came across a public domain book published in the early 1900s that consists entirely of a problem set of beginning- to intermediate-level endgame problems. The book doesn't include any explanations. It is just problems and solutions.

Content Overview

The book I found was Chess Endings for Beginners by J.H. Blake. Blake was apparently a strong English master who was active in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Wikipedia says that he shared 1st place in the 1909 British Championships.

The book starts with elementary King+Pawn vs King endings, demonstrating through the problems different methods of opposition. It moves quickly to K+2P vs K and then to more complex king and multiple pawn endings. Next, it offers heavy piece vs king endings, queen vs multiple piece endings, rook vs pawn(s) endings, rook vs minor piece endings, R+P vs R and R+P vs R+P endings, surprisingly many B+P vs B endings, and finally a few knight endings.

Here are a few sample problems that I found interesting or insightful. (Any analysis notes beyond the main line solution are my own, so reader beware.)

The above is problem number one and it is one of the few "studies" or composed problems. But, it does a nice job right off the bat of helping the reader understand the critical importance of tempi in K+P endgames.

This problem is typical of the King and Pawn endgames in the book. They require much calculation and natural moves often lose half a point. I failed this one numerous times, which led me to create extensive analysis notes.

The above problem shows how an outside passed pawn can dominate a endgame if you can obstruct the well-placed opponent's king.

There are many piece mate problems that I won't show. But the above is an interesting example of a Queen dominating a Rook and Bishop.

Again, the power of a tempo, this time with only Kings and Rooks on the board.

Finally, this last problem exemplifies the many bishop endings in the book. I honestly hadn't been exposed to many bishop endings beyond drawing with opposite-colored bishops and a few edge cases, such as the Bishop and Rook Pawn vs. King ending. The bishop endings in the book were both difficult and quite beneficial.

Instructional Value

If you are an intermediate player who has studied the basic chess endings above through books or videos, this is a great opportunity to practice and reinforce what you've learned. I especially found value in the many K+P endings. These started pretty straightforwardly, as long as you understood the opposition and triangulation. But, pretty quickly, every problem required deep calculation, with many ways to mess up.

Or, in other words, just like in our games.

Too often, when I get to a K+P ending, I move too quickly by making the obvious, natural move. But, K+P endings are concrete and exacting. Every tempo matters, as if you make one inaccurate move, there is often no second chance.

I trained on this 124-problem set in SevenCircles-style (aka the Woodpecker Method). I solved all the problems repeatedly until I could do them all in one sitting. The first time through, it took 9.75 hours spread over 17 days, with only a 54% success rate. By the fifth and final pass through the problem set, I completed all 124 problems in 2.25 hours with an 89% success rate. Of course, this meant that most of the problems were memorized by the fifth iteration. But the previous four passes required re-solving and recalculating the harder problems multiple times until the solutions are recognized on site.

This is just one way this problem set could be used, of course.

Verdict

Overall, if you are in the neighborhood of 1400-2000 rated and looking to exercise your endgame skills, definitely check this one out. It is hard to come by good sets of intermediate endgame problems that don't require lots of theoretical technique. The only downside with the book is that the set of problems is rather small (124) and there is no instructional material beyond the terse solutions. You'll need to go to the endgame courses or manuals for that.

You can also likely find the PGN or PDF online for free, given the book is in the public domain. 

Rating: ★★★★☆